Xerox Graffiti Lawsuit to be Reconsidered

Instead of candy-colored Zire cases and cradles of questionable quality/value, Palm should have licensed G1 and offered it as a ROCK-SOLID plugin to OS 5.x users. I'd have gladly paid $20 for it and even paid as much as $40 to regain that functionality.

G1 is still the most efficient (once you get used to it) stroke sequence for inputting data into a keyboard-less device. There are times on the Treo when I'd still rather bang out a few words via Graffiti vs. having to fumble with the keyboard (I have very fat thumbs).

One of the main reasons I switched to a Treo was to get around fussing with G2--the G1 hack is so unstable on the TX and TealScript is a bloated mess that doesn't provide seamless G1 functionality.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX

Hawkins improved upon Xerox's idea to be sure and I'm not sure that I think that Xerox should have been given a patent for the Unistrokes concept, but based on quite a bit of online research I did years ago and posted in PDABuzz's forums (now lost), I could find no evidence of Hawkins' Graffiti pre-dating Xerox's Unistrokes.

http://Tapland.com
- Tapwave Zodiac News, Reviews, & Discussion -

And we thought Palm was mismanaging things....

_________________
Sean

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

They don't have to "have" prior. They have to "prove" it.

That is, it doesn't matter if Graffiti was created after the Unistrokes patent was awarded. What matters is whether or not prior art exists that demonstrates that the concept was publically known before Xerox applied for the patent. If that's the case, then patent is invalid.

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PalmPilot Pro (1997) -> III (1998) -> Vx (1999) -> m500 (2001) -> m515 (2002) -> ???

Having said that and having reread joad's comments, you may very well have been right about the inference that Hawkins had stuff of his own. But we'd have to ask joad to be certain.

As for silly patents - did you hear about the kid in St. Paul who patented methods for swinging side-to-side on playground swings?

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PalmPilot Pro (1997) -> III (1998) -> Vx (1999) -> m500 (2001) -> m515 (2002) -> ???

Does anyone outside of the court room know what Hawkins & Co. actually submitted as evidence of prior art to invalidate the Unistrokes patent?

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PalmPilot Pro (1997) -> III (1998) -> Vx (1999) -> m500 (2001) -> m515 (2002) -> ???

Thanks for the link. That's an old but still informative (albeit rather blandly written), interesting read.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX

Well, it's no wonder that companies like Palm and Apple are successful, given that they spend virtually nothing on their own research and instead create products by copying other people's ideas, cutting lots of corners, and rushing the result to market. The technical shortcomings of their products are then papered over with styling and marketing.

And you can see the consequences of that to this day: the problems Palm has had with the evolution of PalmOS are a direct consequence of that kind of business strategy.

I happen to think that Xerox is wrong in this case: their patent should be held invalid because there is plenty of prior art. Nevertheless, it also seems pretty clear that much of the Palm Pilot (including Graffiti, but also meany other features) were copied from Xerox and other companies, and Palm deserves little sympathy for their plight.

Here is the story:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2178

And here is the patent:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6368227.html

_________________
Sean

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

This comment from someone who is basically using a PDA that has a PHONE duct-taped onto it. Feh.

-- http://tinyurl.com/rhjal

Giggle.

There's no reason to buy/manage/charge/carry/sync/fight/fumble with 2+ devices when ONE Smartphone can do it all.

Reasons? Perhaps not. But there are plenty of preferences and opinions that validate not owning an all-in-one item.

Top 10 reasons to use separate PDA and cellphone instead of an all-in-one smartphone:

1) Screen size. Separate PDAs typically have bigger, better screens than smartphones. Smartphones with bigger screens tend to be huge, dorky-looking bricks that are too large to carry everywhere. The screen size advantage conferred by having a separate PDA makes it easier to deal with for anything other than the most basic PIM tasks. Reading large amounts of email, reading ebooks, surfing the Internet, watching videos, balancing checkbooks, viewing photos, remote desktop access, etc are a pain in the a$$ to do on most smartphones.

2) Redundancy. Lose your smartphone and you lose access to a lot of information. Lose just a cellphone or just a PDA and you still have the other, likely with your contacts + schedule, etc.

3) Ease of upgrading. With seperates it's easy to upgrade more frequently to obtain any hot new PDA or cellphone features.

4) Looks. Most smartphones (besides the Samsung i500) are too geeky-looking to be used in public without experiencing severe embarassment + shame. (And will the Treo lineup EVER lose its external antenna?)

5) Flexibility. On occasions where the minimum size/weight of equipment is needed, with separates the PDA can be left at home.

6) Selection. With separates, users have the choice of literally hundreds of standalone cellphones and dozens of PDAs and can decide on the perfect combination to meet needs/style preferences. With smartphones, users are limited to whatever gruel is being served up in their local cellphone carrier's Stalag.

7) Phone performance. The cellphone component of most smartphones is woefully inadequate. Unintelligible sound quality, poor reception, absense of profiles, feeble battery life, crappy speakerphone, missing high speed data, useless camera, frequent crashes and a number of other nightmares are common on smartphones and are uncceptable to individuals who rely on their cellphones as an essential business tool. This is one of the reason why many individuals with Treos ironically also carry traditional, trustworthy cellphones. Doesn't having to carry TWO phones more or less defeat the whole point of carrying a smartphone?

8) PDA performance. Fast high end CPUs, dedicated video processors, dual expansion slots, dual Wi-Fi/Bluetooth wireless, etc are features lacking in smartphones.

9) Expense. Break your featurephone and you can replace it for just a few pesos. Break your smartphone and your wallet will be singing the blues. Plus you're stuck with having neither phone nor PDA while you wait to get it replaced.

10) Games. While standalone PDAs can make good gaming systems, smartphones just don't cut it for those interested in mobile gaming. Small screen + small buttons = small fun on smartphones.

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Bottom line: smartphones are - by definition - a compromise trading features and ease of use for the debatable "advantage" of carrying a single device. When properly executed (Samsung i500) the smartphone compromises are potentially acceptable to those of us who demand more of our equipment. When poorly executed or sloppily constructed (Treo 600) the smartphone compromise is an exercise in frustration.

TVoR
Copyright, 2006